FASTER cable goes online

From the sky to the sea, Google now seems to have entrenched itself in communications technology infrastructure on all levels. The company’s undersea cable, built in conjunction with a few other companies, went online Wednesday night, and establishes up to 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth between the west coast of the U.S. and Japan.

The FASTER cable system stretches from Oregon to two landing points in Japan, and was built by NEC alongside Google, China Mobile, China Telecom, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel. Kenichi Yoneyama, Project Manager for FASTER at NEC’s Submarine Network Division, said in a statement:

This was the first trans-Pacific submarine cable built solely by NEC Corporation, employing the latest 100Gbps digital coherent optical transmission technology…This epoch-making cable will not only bring benefits to the United States and Japan, but to the entire Asia-Pacific region…